“Since you allude to it,” Lord Plowden observed, with a certain calm loftiness of tone, “there is no harm in saying that you WILL pay something on that old score. Once you thrust the promise of something like a hundred thousand pounds positively upon me. You insisted on my believing it, and I did so, like a fool. I came to you to redeem the promise, and you laughed in my face. Very well. It is my turn now. I hold the whip-hand, and I should be an ass not to remember things. I shall want that entire one hundred thousand pounds from you, and fifty thousand added to it 'on account of the 'friendly interest,' as you so intelligently expressed it.”
Thorpe's chin burrowed still deeper upon his breast. “It's an outrage,” he said with feeling. Then he added, in tones of dejected resignation: “When will you want it?”
“At the moment when the payments of Rostocker and Aronson are made to you, or to your bankers or agents,” Lord Plowden replied, with prepared facility. He had evidently given much thought to this part of the proceedings. “And of course I shall expect you to draw up now an agreement to that effect. I happen to have a stamped paper with me this time. And if you don't mind, we will have it properly witnessed—this time.”
Thorpe looked at him with a disconcertingly leaden stare, the while he thought over what had been proposed. “That's right enough,” he announced at last, “but I shall expect you to do some writing too. Since we're dealing on this basis, there must be no doubt about the guarantee that you will perform your part of the contract.”
“The performance itself, since payment is conditional upon it—” began Plowden, but the other interrupted him.
“No, I want something better than that. Here—give me your stamped paper.” He took the bluish sheet, and, without hesitation, wrote several lines rapidly. “Here—this is my promise,” he said, “to pay you 150,000 pounds, upon your satisfactory performance of a certain undertaking to be separately nominated in a document called 'A,' which we will jointly draw up and agree to and sign, and deposit wherever you like—for safe keeping. Now, if you'll sit here, and write out for me a similar thing—that in consideration of my promise of 150,000 pounds, you covenant to perform the undertaking to be nominated in the document 'A'—and so on.”
Lord Plowden treated as a matter of course the ready and business-like suggestion of the other. Taking his place at the desk in turn, he wrote out what had been suggested. Thorpe touched a bell, and the clerk who came in perfunctorily attested the signatures upon both papers. Each principal folded and pocketed the pledge of the other.
“Now,” said Thorpe, when he had seated himself again at the desk, “we are all right so far as protection against each other goes. If you don't mind, I will draw up a suggestion of what the separate document 'A' should set forth. If you don't like it, you can write one.”
He took more time to this task, frowning laboriously over the fresh sheet of foolscap, and screening from observation with his hand what he was writing. Finally, the task seemed finished to his mind. He took up the paper, glanced through it once more, and handed it in silence to the other.
In silence also, and with an expression of arrested attention, Lord Plowden read these lines: